The Disguised Groom Who Loved Her Scars (Preview)

Chapter One

Ironwood Bluffs, Wyoming Territory
Late Spring, 1869

As soon as Eliza Callahan entered the parlor and spotted the man standing by the fireplace, she knew why her parents had summoned her. She was immediately stricken by the implications of what this portended and instinctively wished that her brother, William, could have been here with her to defend her. She could feel the scar on her face, its jagged outline stark against the otherwise smooth surface of her freckle-dusted skin, tightening as she braced herself for this encounter which, although a surprise, was not entirely unexpected.

Her mother sat in her customary chair, her hands empty, instead of occupied by the dainty embroidery with which she busied herself whenever the Callahans were entertaining callers. Her father stood on the other side of the stranger, not close enough to show familiarity, but his position a clear indication that this was an alliance of sorts.

Her mother and father appeared anxious and tense. The stranger’s gaze seemed to adhere to the scar on her face as if he were unable to look away, fascinated by its dominance. She met his gaze without abashment until, reddening slightly, he looked away.

“Eliza,” her father began, shifting on the balls of his feet like he did when he was nervous, “this is—”

Eliza knew that with her parents allied against her, and William gone, she was entirely alone. I know who he is,” she interrupted her father, without apology.

“Ma’am, you can’t know me, I’m new to Ironwood Bluffs. Why, I’m practically new to Wyoming I just come up not so very long outta Arizona Territory. I only been here, oh, lemme see,” he tilted his head back as if he was giving deep thought to the calendar in his brain. “Musta been late winter, I reckon, which accounts for why you ain’t seem much of me, with all that snow on the roads and me just settling into town. Now, here it is, springtime and the planting season, I’ve been mighty busy, looking around for land to buy. But I been thinking. You know, once a man gets a chance to rest, he takes stock of his life. Before I settle on where I want to buy, I want a woman by my side. A home ain’t a home lessen’ there’s a woman there too.” He winked broadly. “You don’t know me yet, but it’s my hope we’ll come to know each other better before winter sets in.”

Courtesy would be taken as acquiescence. Eliza could not yield. “I apologize, sir,” Eliza said in the fire and ice tones she employed when her anger ran through her veins like frozen lava. “I did not mean that I know you by name. I know you by intent.”

The stranger looked puzzled, glancing at her father for clarification. Calem knew what his only daughter, and since the death of her twin brother five years earlier, his only heir, meant with her words, as Eliza intended him to know. She knew how to choose her words as if she were selecting a rapier before a fencing match. The gentleness that she had once freely exhibited had been frozen within her after William’s death, and now her words were sharp and pointed when she was displeased.

Grace Callahan, alert to the potential eruption to which her daughter’s temperament was inclined, spoke into the breach. “Dear, Mr. Leam Dunning is a suitor,” she explained. “He has come to ask our permission to pay court to you with the intention of marrying you.”

“Yes,” Eliza said, the single syllable drawn out from her lips as if it were an unrolling coil, “that is his intent. It is not, however, my intention to marry him.” She imagined William as if he were there, visible only to her. How he would have laughed at her manner, and how he would have approved of her defiance.

“Now, Miss Callahan,” Dunning admonished, “You’re likely thinking that I wouldn’t want you for a wife because of your scarred face and all. But that don’t trouble me none,” he avowed. “You got other features that make up for that disfigurement.”

“One thousand acres certainly make up for a scar, doesn’t it?” she inquired matter-of-factly.
Mr. Dunning’s gaze darted over to her father, seeking assistance. Her father, embarrassed by Eliza’s effrontery as she had known he would be, offered it quickly, coming down on the soles of his shoes with force.

“Eliza,” he said, “your mother and I wish to see you married before—”

“Before it’s too late? Have no fear, Pa,” Eliza assured him, her words smooth and icy as a skating pond, “even when my hair loses color and wrinkles compete with my scar for space on my cheek, the Callahan ranch will continue to be alluring.”

“Now, Eliza!” her father exclaimed, his voice raised, “there’s no cause to talk that way. Your mother and I are looking out for you, and we mean to see you a married woman before the end of this year!”

“Yes,” Eliza agreed, the glacial tone making a peculiar match with the fiery blue of her eyes as she responded not to her father, but to her would-be suitor. “I have a lovely ranch, haven’t I? Or at least I will inherit the lovely ranch that my parents own.”

“Eliza,” her mother entered the vocal fray, wincing at this display of poor deportment in her own parlor, “it’s time for you to be married. Mr. Dunning intends to buy property in Ironwood Bluffs and he—”

“Would be glad to see his acreage increase. Yes, I’m sure he would. However,” Eliza’s intonation gradually shed its cool exterior, allowing the volcanic flow of heat to be heard, “I do not consent to be handed over to Mr. Dunning or to any man not of my own choosing. And,” she added, her voice now suffused with anger, “if William were still alive, neither of you would be forcing me into an unwanted marriage. Not only because William would inherit the ranch, but because William would never have allowed you to push a marriage on me!”

Eliza stormed from the room, her wrath the fuel that propelled her from the parlor. Mr. Dunning’s gaze and her parents’ ill-conceived wishes were now behind her as she left the room and the house and went out the door, finding refuge in the open air. Only when she was free of the house and its confinement could Eliza surrender herself to the trembling that overcame her. To have her parents as adversaries, without her brother there to shield her, was overwhelming. Eliza knew herself to be strong, but she also recognized that she was vulnerable. Hiding that vulnerability seemed the only way that she could withstand her parents trying to rule her life.

She sought her usual refuge. The stable was empty of the cowboys who worked on the Callahan ranch, but Eliza didn’t need help to saddle her horse. Lady, her favorite mount, looked up from her stall and neighed happily when she spotted Eliza.

Eliza quickly saddled the horse and led her out of the stall. Standing on the little stepstool that she used to mount her horse, Eliza felt a single pang of grief, remembering how William had teased her when it took longer for his sister to mount than it did him.

Try doing it in skirts, Eliza had challenged him, and see how long it takes you!

That merry memory of the pair of them brought its own pain, for all those recollections were now the archives of her brother’s lost life. But as she always did now, Eliza closed her mind to those past images, treating her memory as if it had doors which could be locked. Now astride Lady, named in a teasing reference to her mother, who was forever reminding her of how a lady ought to behave, Eliza nudged Lady with her knees, and the horse heeded the signal, eager like her mistress to escape from the wooden confines of the stable in exchange for the endless unfettered Wyoming landscape.

Eliza wasn’t sure of her destination, but as if knowing what her mistress intended, Lady turned off the property and onto the dirt road that led into town.

Eliza patted her horse affectionately. “Quite right, Lady,” she approved. “We’ll visit Laura. School will be over for the day, but she always lingers behind to prepare for the next day’s lessons.”

They rode, rider and horse, with the wind at their backs and the warmth of the benign May sun above them. The splendor of the tall trees were decked in their green garb, while the mountains, still taller, stood as they always had and always would, unmoving and immutable.

The schoolhouse was located near the entrance to town, at a point where children walking from farms and ranches could arrive in time for the bell, despite the distance they traveled. There was a rough-hewn wooden fence enclosing the red exterior of the schoolhouse and the grassy land where the children played after eating the lunches they’d brought from home. Eliza had gone to school in this very building, and she looked upon the structure with fondness, for it was here that she and William had absorbed the stories that their teacher, Miss Hastings, had told them. Some of the stories were from favorite books, but others were of her life growing up in a California mining camp.

Eliza wondered about what stories Laura, who had also been a friend to the twins, told her students. She had grown up in the Wyoming Territory, as it was now known, although in the past it had been part of the territories of Dakota, Idaho, and Oregon.

Laura and Eliza were frontier born and bred, but their mothers had been ladies of refinement who had grown up in less rustic surroundings.

Eliza couldn’t imagine growing up anywhere but here.

She tied Lady to one of the fence rails where the grass grew lushly. She opened the rather rickety wooden gate to the schoolyard, which creaked to announce her arrival. The door was open to let in the fragrant, lazy breeze. Though spring and summer awaited, all too soon Ironwood Bluffs would surrender to winter and the little wood stove in the center of the schoolroom would need to be fed chopped logs and kindling to keep the bitter cold away.

“I miss him too,” Laura said softly to the wooden figure of a carved horse that was always on her desk. Then, noticing Eliza’s entrance, she stood up. She said nothing, but the two friends had a long acquaintance, and silence did not mean that either lacked understanding of the other’s meaning.

“You’ve come for a reason,” Laura deduced. “What is it?”

Now that she was no longer required to maintain a pose, Eliza could feel herself giving way to her emotions. It was not something she allowed herself to do very often, but the episode in the parlor had wounded her. How could her parents force her into marriage? How could they even consider such a thing? If William were alive—

“Your parents?” Laura guessed. Eliza had a confidante in Laura, who knew of the tensions that existed between Grace and Calem Callahan, and their strong-minded daughter.

“And a suitor,” was Eliza’s grim response. “They mean for me to be married, and they’ve decided that a Mr. Leam Dunning, who has a scraggly beard the color of a barn mouse, and couldn’t take his eyes off my scar, is meant to be my husband.”

Laura sat back down, her eyes wide. She pointed to the chair beside her desk with the peremptory posture of the teacher that she was. “Why?” she asked reasonably.

“Because they want me to be married and settled before they are old. Mr. Dunning will have no difficulty, he assured me, in disregarding my scar because my other attributes—namely the ranch—will compensate for it.”

“Eliza! He didn’t really say that, did he?” Laura protested in dismay.

“Not in those words, no. But I knew what he meant. It’s not as if I don’t see people staring at my cheek when they think I’m not noticing. I see their pity. I’m not ashamed of the scar. I only wish—I only wish that—” her voice broke.

Laura’s voice was unsteady in response. “You only wish that William had survived the fire with no more than a scar,” she said, “instead of dying.”

Eliza always felt buoyed after talking with Laura, who was not afraid to confront the emotions within and was able to define them clearly.

“Yes,” she said simply, “but you’re the only one who understands that. To have my parents push a marriage on me only reminds me of how different my life was when William was alive.”

Laura was silent for a moment, studying the wooden horse on her desk.

“Then it seems to me,” she said thoughtfully, forming her words as the ideas came to mind, “that you need to have a say in the husband you choose.”

“Yes, of course, except that I don’t want to marry anyone in Ironwood Bluffs,” Eliza was exasperated. “I’m not sure I want to marry at all. I want to live my life the way I choose to live, not fettered the way women are when they marry. The politicians in Cheyenne are working toward a Bill that will give women the vote,” she declared, her eyes glowing. “But here in Ironwood Bluffs, my parents treat me like chattel.”

“There’s only one solution,” Laura decided, her slender face animated with her words. “You must find a husband. Oh, not here, not in Ironwood Bluffs, no. Advertise for one.”

“Advertise for a husband?” Eliza echoed, her nose wrinkling up in confusion, the freckles clustering across her cheekbones.

“A mail-order groom! You’ll receive the offers, and you’ll make the choice. Marriage on your own terms,” Laura concluded. “What could be simpler?”

Chapter Two

Mesilla Flats, New Mexico Territory
Late Summer, 1869

Ezekiel Beaumont carried his traveling valise in one hand and his sister’s carpetbag in the other as he and his sister boarded the stagecoach that would take them as far away from Rafe Thorne and Mesilla Flats as Butterfield Overland Mail had horses and drivers to do so. The stagecoach driver cast an approving eye over their limited baggage as he held the door open for them. “You’ll have the stagecoach to yourselves for the next twenty miles,” he said. “Then we take on passengers. So, set yourselves up to be comfortable now while you can.”

Zeke brightened at this news as he stretched his long legs out on one of the seats, while Emily sat opposite him. “You’ll be able to rest once we start going,” he promised as the slow-moving line of boarding passengers inched forward. “You might even take a nap.”

Emily Thorne, newly-turned eighteen, smiled valiantly, but her red, swollen eyes revealed the true state of her emotions. Zeke couldn’t fault her for her feelings. He, too, grieved the violent death of their mother, Rose Beaumont Thorne, an innocent victim in the shoot-out between her husband and a rival. But as much as his thoughts were consumed with the heavy weight of grief and guilt that he had been unable to protect his mother, he could not give way to the emotions which accompanied that omnipresent mourning.

“I know you’re tired,” he told her. “I reckon leaving home in the dead of night isn’t the best way to begin a journey.”

Emily touched his arm. “Oh, you were right to plan it that way. Leaving now, while Pa is off on business, gives us a better chance of escaping.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying Mr. Denholm,” she said.

“Only a brute would have expected you to marry a man you don’t love,” Zeke responded, his voice low, but vivid with feeling. Especially less than a month after our mother’s death, he thought, but didn’t say the words aloud. They were not departing from Mesilla Flats, the town in which they lived, but from forty miles farther away, so that there would be less chance of Rafe Thorne finding them once he discovered that Zeke and his half-sister, had left the Thorne ranch. He’d made the plans for their trip carefully, and used the money he’d earned and saved up from nights singing at the Mesilla Flats Saloon.

Rafe Thorne wasn’t funding this trip, even though Zeke did draw wages from his stepfather for the work he performed as a ranch hand. That money was saved too, but this train escape for Emily had to be funded by Zeke’s independent earnings. He’d been determined to owe his stepfather nothing.

“What will he do when he comes back from Sante Fe and realizes that we’ve fled?” Emily fretted as she removed her bonnet and stretched against the back of the seat.

Zeke wedged her travel bag underneath his seat against the corner so that it would be somewhat anchored and less likely to drift. With all the books that his sister had packed inside, Zeke was fairly confident that the carpetbag would stay put. Knowing how much solace Emily took from her beloved books, Zeke hadn’t remonstrated with her choices as she packed.

“He won’t know right away,” Zeke assured her as he took his own seat. “We didn’t take all our belongings when we packed, and I told the other fellows in the bunkhouse that we were taking a brief trip to El Paso so that you could shop for wedding things. They won’t think it odd that we’re away, and Rafe won’t think anything until he realizes we’re not coming back.”

“He’ll be so angry,” Emily warned, her blue eyes, so like her mother’s, luminous with the swift spring of unshed tears. “He’ll be enraged, Zeke, and he’s already so hard on you.”

Zeke thought of the harmonica, engraved with his musician father’s name, packed inside his valise. If there was anything that he regarded as a talisman, it was that instrument from the man who had given him life, but not lived long enough to see him grow into childhood. It was Anthony Beaumont’s untimely, debt-ridden death that had forced his widow, Rose Beaumont, into marriage with the wealthy, ruthless cattle baron, Rafe Thorne.

“I won’t be there, will I?” Zeke reminded his sister with a smile.

Her answering smile was forlorn. “You and I both know that Pa has people watching everywhere.”

“And you and I also both know,” Zeke said firmly, “that one day, Rafe Thorne’s crimes are going to be unmasked. Right now, most folks think he’s just a successful rancher. But you and I know that he’s made his wealth by stealing immigrants and poor folks, and forcing them to work for his corrupt cronies, paying no wages as if he owns them. Slaving is gone, Emily, and one day, the law will realize that it’s still taking place in another form, right under their noses.”

“Zeke, if he finds us, he’ll kill you,” Emily said plainly. “He never took you into his confidence because he didn’t trust you with information that could have put him in jail. But he knows that you’re aware of what he does, even if folks in Mesilla Flats aren’t.”

“He never took me into his confidence,” Zeke corrected his sister, “because he knew that I wouldn’t turn a blind eye if I was directly involved. My own father was one of those men who owed him money, and when he died owing Thorne money, our mother paid that debt by marrying him.” Despite the harshness of his words, his honey-hued eyes were kind as he met his sister’s gaze. “But that marriage brought me a sister, and here we are.”

Zeke, protect Emily. Zeke could still hear his mother’s voice, weak but insistent, with this plea.

Rose Beaumont Thorne, dying from a bullet in her lung that couldn’t be removed, had been on her deathbed when she begged Zeke to make sure that his half-sister, the daughter of the man she’d married but never loved, was kept safe. She hadn’t needed to provide reasons or details. Zeke already knew.

I promise, Ma.

She had drawn her last breath in his arms. Rafe Thorne was off on a spree of vengeance to wreak retribution on the foe who had dared to attack him on his own property, killing Rose in the tumult of the gunfight. His absence had been a macabre blessing for the dying mother and her children, although no one had voiced that opinion.

Rafe had returned some days later, sated from his vengeance, satisfied with the deaths he had caused, and intent on repaying one of his allies who had assisted him. Emily was to marry Burton Denholm, a reward for his loyalty to Rafe. Emily had fainted straightaway at the disclosure. It was then that Zeke, adhering to his promise to his mother, had begun to plan their escape.

“I’m so fearful that he’ll set off to find us.”

“Lee will keep an eye on things.” Zeke tried to joke, to dispel the weight of fear which bore down so heavily on his sister. “A man who runs a saloon knows everything that’s going on,” he assured her. “As soon as we settle, I’ll send word to him where we are, so he can keep us up on anything we need to know from Mesilla Flats. You know we can count on Lee.”

His words brought forth a tremulous smile. “I know,” she agreed. “You and Lee have been friends since you were boys. He’s true blue.”

The train, now loaded with its passengers, began to pull away from the station. The noise was jarring, and the odors of the smoke permeated the inside of the railroad car. Zeke looked out the window. He’d be relieved once they were beyond the territories acquired from Mexico just over twenty years ago and into the Wyoming Territory. Zeke knew that Emily was right: her father’s criminal network had no boundaries. Nonetheless, Zeke felt that distance was to their benefit. And Emily was right: Lee was true blue. He’d keep them apprised of any news he gleaned that affected his friends’ safety.

As the train chugged forward on its journey, Zeke pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket. “I wanted to wait until we were on our way to show you this,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a letter from your future sister-in-law.”

“My—”

“We need a new start,” Zeke said. “We need new identities. I answered an advertisement from a woman in the Wyoming Territory. A place named Ironwood Bluffs. She advertised for a husband.”

“She did what?”

“You’ve heard of mail-order brides, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but… I didn’t know women advertised for husbands.”

“Well, Eliza Callahan did.” Zeke was intrigued, himself, by the unusual message he’d read in the newspaper that Lee, who was as voracious for information in print as he was for the same in person from his customers, had handed him within days after his mother’s funeral.

Lee was shrewd and far-seeing, and he’d guessed that with Rafe’s wife gone, the powerful rancher would be likely to flex his authoritative muscle upon her children. Lee had been correct in his predictions, but by the time Rafe ordered his daughter to marry his cohort, Zeke had already initiated a correspondence with the Wyoming woman.

She’d replied, and the correspondence had resumed. Zeke had not told his sister until now, not wanting her to have more to dread than she already bore.

“She informs me that the Wyoming territorial legislature is entertaining a Bill to give women the vote,” he went on, glad to see that finally, Emily was diverted from her apprehensions by this revelation. “She goes on to say that she supports this measure and—” he opened the envelope and withdrew the letter, finding the sentence he sought. “and that ‘she is an independent woman who seeks marriage not a master, and will not be made a subject of male tyranny with the taking of marriage vows.’”

Zeke handed her the letter. Emily’s eyes swept over it in wonder.

“It doesn’t sound as though she’s looking to fall in love,” observed his young sister, whose views on marriage had been shaped by the opposing influences of her mother’s unhappy union with her father and Emily’s own devotion to the stirring romances she read in novels. She read the letter through one more time, then handed it back to him. “It sounds very much as though the two of you will be ideally mated.”

“Yes,” Zeke agreed, returning the letter to his shirt pocket. The paper rustled against the harmonica. He noted idly that both items were housed in the pocket closest to his heart. It was a random thought and, except for his devotion to the father he did not remember, entirely extraneous. He hoped to pass muster with this forthright young woman, but not to fall in love with her. She, apparently, wished for the same.

“Now,” he went on, “Miss Callahan knows me as Harlan Prescott. You and I can’t stay Zeke and Emily. We need new names, mine is Harlan. You might give a thought or two to dyeing your hair.”

Emily’s hands flew to the bonnet protectively. “My hair!” she cried.

“We need new names,” he repeated, “and at least one of us needs to have a new appearance. If Rafe sends anyone, they’ll be looking for a pretty, golden-haired girl who is as slender as a willow tree with eyes as green as its leaves. We can’t change your eyes or your form, but we can change your hair color. It’s no good for me to dye my hair,” he continued, “because they’ll come looking for me after they find you. If they come looking,” he added, knowing that Rafe would certainly search for them, but he wanted to give Emily some respite, however meager, from her woes. “We can take care of it when the stagecoach makes an overnight stop along the journey.”

Emily put down her hands, resigned. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But I don’t know anything about how to change my hair color.”

Zeke had already taken care of that. Maribel, one of the waitresses at Lee’s saloon, had been a valuable source of information on such arcane subjects as the dyeing of hair. “It won’t be hard,” he promised. “I’ve found out how to do it. A shade of brown, not too dark, but not too light either, will change your appearance. Once we’re sure that we’re safe, you can go back to what you were born with.”

“I hope not!” she declared. “Ma always said I was as bald as a cannon ball when I was born and didn’t have hair until I was a year old!”

They laughed together, cheered by this jocular memory of their late mother.

“Whyever did you choose the name ‘Harlan’?” Emily asked.

“Because it doesn’t sound anything like Zeke,” was his candid answer. “What about you?”

“Lilly,” she said immediately. “That was Ma’s favorite flower.”

They shared another smile, warm with the thought of the woman whose name had been Rose.

“I’ve worked up a background for myself. I’ll say I was a cavalry scout for the Union forces during the war. I could have been,” he insisted at his sister’s doubtful expression. “I was nineteen when it ended. I could have lied about my age and enlisted at sixteen. A lot of fellows did.”

“Back East, maybe, but not in Mesilla Flats.”

“Harlan Prescott was never in Mesilla Flats,” Zeke reminded her.

“Then where was he from?” Emily countered.

“We’ve got the rest of the journey to create the life story of Harlan and Lilly Prescott,” he replied.